Excerpt from article by FRANK RICH, New York Magazine
For much of its history, misogyny was not the style of the party of Lincoln. For most of the twentieth century, the GOP was ahead of the curve in bestowing women’s rights. When the Nineteenth Amendment granting suffrage was ratified in 1920, roughly three-quarters of the 36 state legislatures that did so were controlled by Republicans. In 1940, the GOP mandated that women be equally represented in its national and executive committees—a standard not imposed by the Democrats until more than three decades later.
Barry Goldwater’s wife Peggy, inspired by a Margaret Sanger lecture in Phoenix in 1937, would help build one of the nation’s largest Planned Parenthood affiliates. Her husband favored abortion rights. “I think the average woman feels, ‘My God, that’s my business,’ and that’s the way we should keep it,” he said late in his career. Prescott Bush, the Connecticut senator who sired a presidential dynasty, was another Sanger enthusiast and treasurer for the first national Planned Parenthood fund-raising campaign. His son George, when a congressman in the sixties, was an ardent birth-control advocate and the principal Republican author of the trailblazing Family Planning Act of 1970. Capitol Hill colleagues jokingly nicknamed him “Rubbers.” [MORE]
In Melanie Abramov's experimental short film "Dame Factory Inc.," women work in the Dame Factory: a clean, efficient and sexy organization spitting out the tastiest of treats, quite literally.
http://www.ted.com Blogger Courtney Martin examines the perennially loaded word "feminism." In a personal and heartfelt talk, she describes the three paradox...
The leading national organization opposing same-sex marriage has sought to split the Democratic Party base by pitting African-Americans and Hispanics against gay-rights groups, according to confidential strategy memos made public by court officials...
While women still earn 77 cents for every dollar that men make in the United States, the gender wage gap has closed significantly over the past several decades. Now, for the first time ever, a new study has connected the narrowing of that pay gap to increased access to birth control pills.
The University of Michigan study, which analyzed the careers of 4,300 women, shows that the earlier a woman can start taking birth control pills, the more likely she is to earn higher wages later in life.
The fanatical fundamentalists are at it again. Not to be outdone by Catholic bishops clamoring for ever-increasing fetal protections, Flip Benham’s Operation Save America has teamed up with Go Stand Speak, LifeLink, Jeremiah Cry Ministries, Personhood USA, and Repent America to make five states—Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming—abortion “refuges.”
\The five were chosen because each has just one reproductive health clinic. What’s more, the campaign to make these states abortion-free will link grassroots activism—raucous picketing, complete with billboard-sized pictures of bloody body parts--with a media crusade geared to maligning those who support freedom of choice.
It's officially over. The Idaho House has announced that it will not be holding a hearing on the forced ultrasound bill before the session ends this week, meaning that the bill is officially dead for 2012.
[This article has been updated to add a response from Hannah Brass, Legislative Director of Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest.]
The Feminist Majority Foundation works for social and political and economic equality for women by using research and education to improve women's lives. [MORE]
As more Indian women share their experiences, it is clear how widespread domestic violence is, cutting across community, caste and economic lines. But India has begun to acknowledge the problem.
In India, China and many other parts of the world today, girls are killed, aborted and abandoned simply because they are girls. The United Nations estimates as many as 200 million girls are missing in the world today because of this so-called "gendercide".
What is feminism? What does it really mean? Turns out it's not some big, scary thing. In Feminism F.A.Q.s Jarrah Hodge of Gender Focus tackles questions and myths about feminism.
When I was in college I was a single parent. Finding myself struggling personally with the demands of continuing education and single parenting (a special needs child too yet) was challenging enough; but this was at the time that Tommy Thompson was governor & he made bashing single moms & welfare a public sport. (Yeah, some of us fought back; like the Welfare Warriors.)
It was incomprehensible how those of us left with children were not only held accountable while biological dads walked away Scott-free, but were to blame for all of society’s ills. Even those who raised children alone by design & without public assistance were vilified, a la Murphy Brown. It wasn’t just moral outrage (though that did & does exist); it wasn’t an ignorance — these were educated people saddling us with unrealistic responsibilities and ludicrous outcomes. We were being scapegoated with such an intensity that it must be hiding a deep fear of some sort… Was it simply another way to display the classic fear & hatred of “female,” or was there more?
On my school bus in Masschusetts (1945) there were several children whose mother had been put in prison.... why? Because she had her first child out of wedlock.... They called it "girl's industrial school" and girls often went there for sexual behaviors whereas boys went to a different "reform school" (one boy in my class went there for stealing from the railroad tracks) Stop the War Against Women;
The Obama administration has directed a health insurance company to cover the same-sex spouse of a federal employee. Gay rights advocates say they believe this is the first time such coverage has been allowed.
A March 9 letter to Blue Cross Blue Shield, from Shirley Patterson, assistant director of federal employee insurance operations for the Office of Personnel Management, said that “OPM hereby withdraws any outstanding directive regarding the enrollment of Ms. Golinski’s wife, Amy C. Cunninghis, in her family health benefits plan.”
OPM previously said the wife of Karen Golinski, a federal court employee in California, could not be covered. [MORE]
If a surpressed woman demands to have her own identity, opinion, sexual orientation and freedom, she has my support. Only under one condition: I am not going to defend those humanrights under a fake name, but under the name, my parents gave me at birth. Because I stand for what I believe in. Sisters of feminism, you go! We are the 50% of Planet Earth!!
Conscious Contraceptives Kicks off College Fundraising Competition to Improve ...SBWire (press release)“SIC is a collaboration of motivated students and alumni from several colleges across the country driven to advance global sexual health.
Recent comments by Wisconsin Rep. Don Pridemore, combined with his attacks on single mothers, gave us pause as to whether Representative Pridemore really understood that women are individual human beings with basic human rights, or if he takes that whole Adam's rib thing literally
Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the two-year anniversary of President Obama signing the historic Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law an opportunity to remind Americans what women would lose if efforts to overturn the law succeed.
On March 26, the Supreme Court will begin to hear arguments from opponents who want to overturn the law. NARAL Pro-Choice America will mobilize its supporters on Tuesday, March 27, the day on which health-care advocates will focus on how the law helps women get affordable care.
Keenan adds, “Since these anti-choice politicians have decided to take their War on Women to the Supreme Court, we’ll meet them at the steps.”
President Barack Obama's re-election campaign has released a new video featuring Gloria Steinem, in which the feminist icon argues that this election is a "turning point" and that women should grant Obama a second term if they want to see their rights protected.
by MARA GANDAL-POWERS, National Women's Law Center via RH Reality Check
The House of Representatives is currently considering a bill, H.R. 5, which would reform medical malpractice laws. Several Congresswomen drafted an amendment to this bill which would have limited the bill’s malpractice protections if the malpractice claim is based on a violation of the health care reform law related to the women’s preventive health services. The Congresswomen went through the usual steps that an amendment must go through before it can be proposed.... And then the Rules Committee attempted to silence these women, just as Rep. Issa tried to silence Sandra Fluke.
An opinionated woman obsessed with objects, entertained by ephemera, intrigued by researching, fascinated by culture & addicted to writing. The wind says my name; doesn't put an @ in front of it, so maybe you don't notice. http://www.kitsch-slapped.com
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